Copernicus was a polish genius who was born in 1473.
At the time he was alive Europe was a theocracy. The Catholic Church had immense power and exerted it. It was heresy to refute the words of the Bible. If you denied Jesus was born of a virgin you could be vilely tortured and cruelly burnt to death.
The prevailing views of the church, based on the words of the Bible, was that the Earth was the centre of the universe, created by god. To say otherwise was heresy.
Ptolemy had set out a model for the Earth-centric solar system which was widely accepted. It worked except for the peculiar motions of the planets. He went to great length to try to explain this.
Copernicus realised and worked out mathematically that the Earth was not the centre of the solar system; it was circling the sun with the other planets. He did not publish his paper until on his deathbed for fear of ridicule and persecution.
Copernicus’s theory opened the door for other scientists to work out the true nature of the universe. Without him we were literally in the Dark of the Dark Ages. Religious fundamentalists are completely insane and intransigent when it comes to the words in their books. We see it today with US Creationists who claim the world is only a few thousand years old and men walked with dinosaurs. We see it with ISIL where beautiful history and culture, like the Buddhist Bamiyan statues, are being systematically destroyed because of texts.
The church had to be dragged screaming from its view that the Earth was flat, at the centre of the universe with the dome of heaven above behind which was the glory of heaven. Underneath was hell.
If it wasn’t for the heroism of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Galileo we’d still be wandering around in mediaeval costume, going to public burnings and being in ignorant rubbish.
Strangely it took sixty years for the Church to declare Copernicus’s work as heresy but then Giordano Bruno had his tongue pinioned, was tortured and burnt to death for believing it and Galileo nearly met the same fate under the Spanish Inquisition.
These men are heroes. They stood for truth in the face of the most vicious and intransigent fundamentalist theocrats. Without them we would not know the truth.
Fundamentalism (belief in the absolute truth of the word of religious texts), is obscene, ignorant, incorrect and has led to some of the worst atrocities.
Whether it is ISIS or the Creationists with their suits it is the same stupidity and barbarity. The truth is out there – not in ‘holy’ books.